[b]Elend Carrol[/b]

It took a moment for the shock of a magically-appearing teddy bear to wear off, but the talking bit didn't surprise Elend at all. He'd seen robots before, and this one was no different. It moved better, and the voice was very well done, but it was just a robot, a tool, like the guns and the cameras, of... who? Someone else? But who would want to do this to him, and to these other people too?

And then the robot said something, something Elend had to process before it truly registered.

"..killing a fellow classmate."

What!? Elend's brain went from buzzing a mile a minute to flatlining in an instant. What? What had it said? Kill? Kill a fellow classmate? No, that wasn't right. That would be... insane. He couldn't kill someone. He could barely talk to someone else. Cassie! He needed to get out of this place. He couldn't kill someone. He couldn't. He couldn't, he couldn't he couldn't he couldn't hecouldnthecouldnthecouldnthecouldnt...

At some point, his feet had begun moving on their own. He hadn't, he couldn't, hear anything that the others were saying. His panic had filled his ears with a roaring waterfall of confusion and emotion. Panic threatened to overwhelm him, to sweep him away. So the strong, the cold, analytically, rational side of his mind took the confusion and fear and pushed it away to burn itself out unfelt by their owner.

Elend found himself standing in the middle of the room, exactly where the robotic stuffed bear had appeared, a camera looking at him with a single cold eye from above. He felt numb, cold inside not that the wave of irrational panic had passed. Right now, the last thing he could be was irrational; that could very likely get him killed. There was so much he still didn't know about his current situation. He needed to gather more information. For all anyone knew, that ear was full of crap. Too bad no one was willing to call that particular bluff, especially not after seeing those guns.

The dark-haired boy collapsed to the floor, tears streaming down his face. "Why? Why me, I'm nobody? Why would we have to kill ourselves? You can't just say something like that!" Elend's two glassy, tearful eyes met the camera's singular dark one. "You can't be serious! Right? Monokuma, or whoever it is that's doing this, please stop! It's not funny anymore! I just want to go home!" And with that, Elend's voice broke, and he colapsed into a ball on the cold, tiled floor. "Why, why us," he muttered under his breath. One arm was wrapped around his chest,as if to try and hold its owner together with sheer strength of grip, and the other slipped the corner of the plastic tile that Monokuma had been standing on, and the small tack used to cut it loose, into Elend's pocket. Rule four did say that investigating the school was permitted, but Elend wasn't sure how the headmaster would appreciate being investigated personally.

"Why, why, why us," he repeated, his head pressed up against his knees, rocking on the smooth tile. Later on he'd search his clothing for any hairs that the bear had dropped. A stuffed animal would almost always be covered in traces of its owner, and if he could shrink down the list of suspects, that would be enough. That would be enough to keep him sane. So long as he was Elend, Super High School Level Scientist, he didn't have to be Elend, shy and scared little boy who just wanted to be crying real tears and scream for his sister to save him.